Napolitano: Shoes-on flight in sight

Air travelers will eventually be able to keep their shoes on to pass through security, but the restrictions on carrying liquids on board are likely to remain in place for some time, Homeland Security Secretary J anet Napolitano told a POLITICO Playbook breakfast Tuesday.

“We are moving towards an intelligence and risk-based approach to how we screen,” Napolitano told Mike Allen during a morning forum at the Newseum. “I think one of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on. One of the last things you will [see] is the reduction or limitation on liquids.”

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“The solution to many if not all of these inconveniences is better and better technology,” Napolitano added.

The Homeland Security head did not detail the new technology that will be introduced that would allow passengers to keep their shoes on at airport security checkpoints.

She said research and development efforts on the shoe front are progressing, but technology to perform a quick scan that can distinguish harmless liquids from explosives isn’t there yet.

“In terms of what we see coming in the months and years ahead, it will probably be easier and it looks like it will be to deal with the shoe issues before we can remove the restriction on liquids,” the secretary said.

With the Transportation Security Administration’s screening of children and the elderly generating high-profile complaints, Napolitano warned that any hard-and-fast rules exempting some types of travelers would open a major gap in security.

“We can’t adopt blanket exclusions because the exclusion is exploited by those who seek to do evil,” she said at the POLITICO event.

“Many, many things have already been put in place not because there’s a specific, credible threat but we want Sunday to be a day of commemoration and remembrances and we want it to be safe,” the secretary said. “Not just DHS—a lot of other agencies in the federal government state and local gvoernments are really leaning forward to make sure we’re as safe and secure and we can be.”

She added, “We don’t have specific or credible information that an attack is pending, that’s not to say it isn’t…There’s no specific or credible threat. That’s the term of art. It’s also a possibility that we will have a lone actor a lone wolf decide, ‘This is a great day to get some attention. I’m going to do something’.”

Some experts have warned that the federal bureaucracy often add layers of precautions but rarely goes back and takes a hard look at whether they’re necessary.

“When we implemented that three-ounce liquids ban in the summer of 2006, did I think that would be a forever thing? No,” Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend told POLITICO recently. “It has to do with the complacency and laziness of the bureaucracy.”